Thursday, May 31, 2012

The jury deliberated for 9 days, acquitted him of one charge and were unable to come to a decision on the other 5.

The case resolved around charges of whether he used campaign funds to hide his pregnant mistress Rielle Hunter while he was running for president.

The main question was not whether the funds involved, solicited from long time Edwards donors, were actually used for the purpose of funding the coverup, but whether Edwards knew they were being used for that purpose. In other words, as Hillary Clinton could tell you, the problem of proving intent, the best friend a scam artist armed with a law degree has.

Edwards acknowledged that in his post trial remarks:

"While I do not believe I did anything illegal, or ever thought I was doing anything illegal, I did an awful, awful lot that was wrong and there is no one else responsible for my sins."

Lessee..once she began showing, Hunter was first hidden out with loyal campaign aide Andrew Young and his wife at a $2,700 a month rental home not far from the Edwards estate in Chapel Hill in North Carolina. Later, Edwards moved the trio to a $20,000-a-month beachfront manor in Santa Barbara, California, with the bills being paid for by one of his long time donors, Texas attorney Fred Baron.

Edward's attorneys would have you believe that Baron (who's now conveniently deceased) did this out of sheer love for Massah Edwards. It seems to have worked.

Another interesting point Edward's attorneys brought up was to insist that the motive had nothing to do with his presidential campaign, but was simply to keep his cancer stricken wife from finding out. Except, as was revealed at the trial, Elizabeth Edwards found out well before Edwards was busted by the National Enquirer in that Beverly Hills hotel, as far back as Dec. 30, 2006, the day Edwards officially announced his bid for president. She simply decided, for whatever reason,not to go public.

One of my sources who ought to know tells me that there was one rather forceful holdout on the jury who gradually got a couple of the others to come over to his side. If my source is correct, it appears that at least some members of the jury were gotten to, which is hardly surprising in this kind of case.

Even funnier, since the case involves campaign finance laws, it's up to the Obama Department of Justice whether to retry John Edwards, and apparently they're not going to. Well connected and prominent Democrat, probably hit up for a sizeable PAC donation to the Obama Campaign, badda bam badda bing..

Even worse, John Edwards isn't closing the door on a future run for office:

"I don't think God's through with me. I really believe he thinks there's still some good things I can do."

Dances-With-Socialism just got endorsed by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. As the above clip shows, when a reporter asked her point blank about her lying about her Native American heritage, she got completely flustered to the point Governor Patrick had to answer for her. Watch how Warren melts down when the reporter insists on an answer from her, and she stonewalls and goes into a rant.

Patrick's meme that the people of Massachusetts 'don't care about this issue' may or may not be correct, given that it's Massachusetts. But this whole saga has to do with the proposed candidate's integrity...not to mention that she appears not to be able to stand on her own two feet when asked a relevant question?

“At some point after I was hired by them, I . . . provided that information to the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard,’’ she said in a statement issued by her campaign. “My Native American heritage is part of who I am, I’m proud of it and I have been open about it.’’

Warren’s statement is her first acknowledgment that she identified herself as Native American to the Ivy League schools. While she has said she identified herself as a minority in a legal directory, she has carefully avoided any suggestion during the last month that she took further actions to promote her purported heritage.

When the issue first surfaced last month, Warren said she only learned Harvard was claiming her as a minority when she read it in the Boston Herald.

Do the people of Massachusetts want someone like this representing them in the U.S. Senate? We'll see.

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Not that anyone watches CNN, but as surrogates for President Obama, they want absolutely nothing so much as to play along with the president's distraction strategy: "Jobs? The economy? Look, a squirrel!" Or in this case, "Look, Donald Trump, Romney supporter, is a birther! "

Too much is known about Barack Obama this time out. If the Obama campaign wants to play in the dirt, there's going to be a lot more coming back their way than they can throw.

Soledad O'Brien mentions John McCain's conduct in 2008 as an example Romney ought to follow. Of course she would! McCain stupidly insisted on taking the high road to an absurd degree, and his reward was to get buried in slime and ridicule by Barack Obama and his media lackeys - everything from a bogus headline story about a supposed affair with a lobbyist to attacks on his family, nasty cracks about his age and even about his service related disability.

Not this time. The issues are going to be Obama's failures - on the economy, on energy, on jobs and on foreign policy. And if Obama's campaign wants to bring up side issues, let the games begin.

As I reported earlier, Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk was livid over the insult, which is just the latest instance of shameful treatment by the Obama Administration of one of our best allies in Europe. “We can’t accept such words in Poland, even if they are spoken by a leader of an allied country,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk told journalists in Warsaw today. “Saying Polish concentration camps is as if there was no German responsibility, no Hitler.”

"I am convinced that our American friends can today allow themselves a stronger reaction than a simple expression of regret from the White House spokesman -- a reaction more inclined to eliminate once and for all these kinds of errors," Tusk said.

Members of Poland's Jewish community, including the country's Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich said in a statement that: "We expect President Barack Obama to personally correct his words."

Remember back during the 2008 campaign, when candidate Obama and his lackeys in the media were railing about 'Cowboy Bush' who had ruined our foreign relations with our allies and how President Obama in his awesomeness was going to make it all better?

From Poland, to Israel, to the UK, to Canada,to Japan, to Latin America, President Obama has, through cluelessness, elementary protocol gaffes, seemingly deliberate insults and amateurish foreign policy ticked off most of our allies while appeasing our enemies and being abused by them like a $5 street hooker.

This is just the latest example.

Let me say this to my Polish readers...for what it's worth, I apologize for our clueless, ill mannered president.Please keep in mind that most Americans value how good an ally Poland has been, and we hope to re-establish our relationship once he's swept into the dumpster of history.

A group of more than 150 Cherokees—enrolled Cherokees and descendants from the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes, the Cherokee Nation, the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians, and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians—demanded today that Elizabeth Warren tell the truth about her "Cherokee" ancestry and identity. {...}

Twila Barnes and David Cornsilk are spokespeople for the group.

In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, Ms. Barnes had a direct message for Elizabeth Warren:

I would like to meet with Ms. Warren, in person, and explain why her false claim of Cherokee ancestry is an issue. She can ignore the questions of a reporter, but can she ignore the questions of a real Cherokee?

Though our ancestors suffered, they also overcame and thrived, but they paid a very high price for us to be able to claim our heritage. That heritage belongs to us, and no one else. For Ms. Warren to have claimed that heritage and used it for her own selfish purposes is disrespectful and disgusting.

The most comical aspect of this is that Elizabeth Warren could have stopped this at any time. All she had to say was 'This is part of a long family tradition, and it may have been mistaken. Sorry about that.'

It all would have blown over. Instead Dances-With-Socialism was so obsessed with her own mythology and had been lying about it for personal gain for so long, she believed her own horse manure and was arrogant enough to believe she was going to continue to get away with it.

Given that it's Massachusetts and anything could happen but I have a feeling that Speaks-With-Forked-Minority-Status just might not end up in the U.S. Senate in 2012.

President Barack Obama had a bunch of 20 carefully selected Jewish community leaders up to the White House yesterday. They appear to have stemmed mainly from the Conservative community, which refers to their denomination, not their politics.

In the meeting, the president bragged that he knows more "about Judaism" than all past presidents, (from his reading) and that back in Chicago he was accused of being a puppet of the Israel lobby because 'all his friends were Jewish'.

Let's forget about the fact that some of the Founding Fathers actually spoke and read Hebrew (William Bradford, for instance, wrote the first draft of the Mayflower Compact in the language and James Madison and Alexander Hamilton studied the language among others) and were quite familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures,or that George Washington personally wrote to the Truro Synagogue welcoming Jews top be part of the new nation while quoting the prophet Micah.

No, let us marvel at how much knowledge and respect President Obama has fo rJews and Judaism.

He has so much respect for Jews and Judaism that he proudly attended Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam sponsored Million Man March, one of the worst public displays of outright and overt Jew hatred in American history.

Oh, and his friends? Let's look at President Obama's best friends - people like Reverend Jeremiah Wright ( another buddy of Louis Farrakhan's from way back) , Rashid Khalidi, Van Jones, Jesse Jackson, Khalid al-Mansour, Bill Ayers, Al Sharpton, Edward Said and a host of others who could not be said to be friendly to Jews by any stretch of the imagination.

Now I don't know about you, but it doesn't strike me as usual for someone who claims to have such great regard for Jews to hang out with so many people who despise them.

According to Ha'aretz, "[He] wondered how come no one asks Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner or Senate minority leader Mitch McConnel [sic] about their support to Israel."

Similarly, he said to the group, "I [am] not going to tell you again how I even feel about Israel, but why [are] we still talking about it?"

The reason people are still talking about it is because this president's support for Israel, when it's occurred, has been grudging at best, and for the most part arguably the most hostile in U.S. history.

People don't have those kind of worries about John Boehner or Mitch McConnell, because their track record with Jews and Israel is, well different.

However, I'll give President Obama credit for one piece of Jewish knowledge. He definitely knows what the word chutzpah means.

According to the Egyptian website, El Bashayer, Muhammad Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood presidential candidate, has declared that he will "achieve the Islamic conquest (fath) of Egypt for the second time, and make all Christians convert to Islam, emigrate or else pay the jizya," the financial tribute required of dhimmis (non-Muslims) living under Muslim rule.

Morsi reportedly made these comments in an interview at the headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, adding "We will not allow Ahmed Shafiq [his contending presidential candidate] or anyone else to impede our second Islamic conquest of Egypt."

When asked what he thought about many Christian Copts coming out to vote for his secular opponent, Ahmed Shafiq, Morsi reportedly said, "They need to know that conquest is coming, and Egypt will be Islamic, and that they must pay jizya or emigrate."

Now it's important to note two things. First, that this is a secualr leaning website rather than an Islamist one and second that Morsi is normally cagey enough to keep these sentiments to himself, although there's no question that this is standard Muslim Brotherhood dogma.

Either he thought he was speaking to a fellow Islamist, or he is so confident of victory that he no longer feels he has to hide these sentiments until after the election

The occasion was the awarding of the Presidential Medal of Freedom to a unique and heroic individual, Jan Karski.

After the joint Nazi and Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, Karski, a Polish officer, collected evidence of exactly what the Germans were doing in Poland at places like Auschwitz and risked his life to bring it to British PM Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt in 1943. His evidence included proof of the extermination of the Warsaw Ghetto, and he and others urged the allies to slow up the carnage by taking steps like bombing the railway leading to Aushchwitz-Birkenau. Roosevelt declined to do so, even though other targets in the area not related to the death camps were bombed by the allies.

In his speech, President Obama made reference to 'Polish death camps', something that deeply insulted the Poles, who lost 6 million people to the Nazis, half of them Jews.

The Polish government has been engaging in a campaign to correct errors like this in the media for over a decade.

“The president misspoke -- he was referring to Nazi death camps in German occupied Poland,” Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said in a statement. “We regret this misstatement.”

So much for President Obama being, in his own words, "a student of history."

The text of Obama’s remarks on the White House website has yet to be corrected as of today.

“The White House will apologize for this outrageous mistake,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski wrote on his Twitter account. “It’s a shame that such a momentous ceremony has been overshadowed by ignorance and incompetence.”

Part of what's going on has been the Obama Administration's shameful treatment of one of our best allies in Europe.

The Poles have always appreciated that it was President Reagan's support for solidarity and his work with the Pope that played a major part in destroying the Evil Empire that enslaved them, and Poland's joining of NATO in 1999 only cemented the close ties.

The Poles, like many other ex-Soviet colonies, saw the US as the ultimate protector of Poland's independence from Russian imperialism, something that strikes a deep historic chord in Poland.

It was Poland who was one of a trio of US allies, along with Britain and Australia, who sent troops to take part in the invasion of Iraq.

Their reward was to be unceremoniously sold out by President Obama, who repudiated the agreement in exchange for a Russian 'reset' that was supposed to include additional Russian assistance with Iran but ultimately nettedabsolutely nothing..since the Russians already had what they wanted and could afford to sit back and chuckle at our naive and clueless president behind his back. And in an amazing display of ignorance and insensitivity, the announcement that the US was leaving the Poles and Czech twisting in the wind came on on September 17th, the 70th anniversary of the Soviet Union's invasion of eastern Poland during World War II in collaboration with the Nazis.

When Polish President Lech Kaczynski, his wife Maria, the Polish First Lady, and 94 other senior officials died in a tragic and somewhat mysterious plane crash in Smolensk, Russia back in 2010, President Obama claimed he was unable to attend the funeral..and was later caught out on the golf course.

If the Poles seem like they're being far too critical, all one has to do is look at the record. These scripted remarks, read off the president's teleprompter are merely the latest in a series of insults to an ally that merits far better.

If nothing else, it merits a heartfelt apology from the president, not a formulaic statement of 'regrets' delivered by one of his spokesmouths.

His diplomatic successes included the effort to repatriate hundreds of international staff and citizens of Western countries from Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. From 1995 to 1996, as under secretary for peacekeeping, he oversaw a difficult transition of that responsibility in Bosnia and Herzegovina from the United Nations to NATO. He is considered responsible for defusing a number of conflicts in Africa, notably a 2008 agreement that halted a civil war in Kenya. But Mr. Annan also is known for having weathered some spectacular lapses. He led the United Nations peacekeeping operation when it failed to halt the Rwanda genocide in 1994 — for which he personally accepted some blame — and the Srebrenica massacre and the collapse of Somalia in 1995. The Darfur genocide in Sudan, which began in 2003, occurred on his watch as secretary general. His career as secretary general was also marred by a corruption investigation into an oil-for-food program in Iraq administered by the United Nations. Although a panel of inquiry found that Mr. Annan had not influenced the awarding of a contract to the company that employed his son, Kojo, it criticized him for not looking more aggressively into that company’s United Nations ties.

"[D]iplomatic successes" on one hand; "spectacular lapses" on the other. Other would call those lapses, "failures."

Srebrenica is rarely mentioned nowadays in Annan’s offices on the 38th floor of the UN secretariat building in New York. He steps down in December after a decade as secretary-general. His retirement will be marked by plaudits. But behind the honorifics and the accolades lies a darker story: of incompetence, mismanagement and worse. Annan was the head of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) between March 1993 and December 1996. The Srebrenica massacre of up to 8,000 men and boys and the slaughter of 800,000 people in Rwanda happened on his watch. In Bosnia and Rwanda, UN officials directed peacekeepers to stand back from the killing, their concern apparently to guard the UN’s status as a neutral observer. This was a shock to those who believed the UN was there to help them. Annan’s term has also been marked by scandal: from the sexual abuse of women and children in the Congo by UN peacekeepers to the greatest financial scam in history, the UN-administered oil-for-food programme. Arguably, a trial of the UN would be more apt than a leaving party.

It's remarkable that Annan's failures as head of DPKO somehow qualified him to serve two terms as Secretary General. At the UN, apparently, nothing succeeds like failure.

The only way that his failure in Syria hurts his reputation is that the numbers of dead don't quite match the totals that his dereliction of duty caused in the 1990's. Yet.

“I don’t think that Assad lost an hour of sleep last night because of those people leaving,” Mr. Barak said of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. “More concrete action is required,” he added. “These are crimes against humanity and it’s impossible that the international community is going to stand aside.”

As an intelligence operation, it must have seemed like pure genius: Recruit a Pakistani doctor to collect blood samples that could identify Osama bin Laden’s family, under cover of an ongoing vaccination program. But as an ethical matter, it was something else. The CIA’s vaccination gambit put at risk something very precious — the integrity of public health programs in Pakistan and around the globe. It also added to the dangers facing nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in a world that’s increasingly hostile to U.S. aid organizations.

I might be sympathetic to this argument if the countries where American NGO's were endangered weren't actively spreading hatred of America and helping America's enemies. There are plenty of imagined conspiracy theories out there alleging America's evil intent. This is simply an effort to obscure Pakistan's role as America's enemy.

As I stepped onto three wobbly bricks leading into the tunnel, the first thing I heard was “Watch your head.” This phrase would be repeated many times during the 1,000-foot walk to the Gaza side. After about the 10th warning, I yelled up the tunnel, “I’m much more worried about being bombed than grazing my head!” My guide, who, like the others I spoke with here, refused to give his name for fear of the authorities, guffawed. It took him half a minute to recover from the “ridiculousness” of my concern. ... “This is our life,” said one of the workers, his face iced in a layer of white dust. “Life is expensive, and Rafah is even more high-priced than Cairo. So we are forced to work and live underground.”

Despite her regularly expressed fear of being bombed, according to an earlier account from the Times, there is evidence, that Israel knew which tunnels aren't used for munitions:

But with the Israeli bombing, and, unspoken, the heavy Egyptian police and military presence that the crisis has meant for the town, the tunnel trade has stopped for now, the residents said. “Nothing is going in now,” said Nader Sayed, 28. “It’s impossible now.” Hamas, the residents said, controls other tunnels, conduits for guns, cement, explosives and fertilizers for explosives. Muhammad al-Zarb said that the Israelis somehow seemed to know which tunnels were commercial and which were run by Hamas, and that they seemed to be selective in their bombing. “If someone has a tunnel for Chipsy, it seems O.K.,” he said. “When a Hamas guy has a tunnel for weapons, they bomb it.”

If the new correspondent seems to have a flair for the dramatic, it could be that she's had a previous career as an activist, as CIF Watch documents: (h/t Daled Amos)

There have been many different explanations given over the past 10 years for the strength of the American-Israeli relationship, ranging from the idea that Israel has the best and most immediately deployable army in the Middle East, to the idea that a small cabal of wealthy and influential Jews has hijacked American foreign policy.

You mean the Z.O.G.? The Zionist Occupied Government?

Yes.

Personally, from an emotional point of view, myself, as me, I prefer the Z.O.G. explanation above all others. I love the idea that the Zionists have sufficient power to actually occupy America, and through America to basically run the world. I love the idea of being a member of a secretive and powerful cabal. If you put my name Luttwak together with Perle and Wolfowitz and you search the Internet, you will get this little list of people who run the American government and the world, and I’m on it. I love that.

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. - George Orwell

Welcome to the Watcher's Council, a blogging group consisting of some of the most incisive blogs in the 'sphere, and the longest running group of its kind in existence. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council.Then we vote on the best two posts, with the results appearing on Friday.

You can, too! Want to see your work appear on the Watcher’s Council homepage in our weekly contest listing? Didn’t get nominated by a Council member? No worries.

Simply head over to Joshuapundit and post the title a link to the piece you want considered along with an e-mail address ( which won't be published) in the comments section no later than Monday 6PM PST in order to be considered for our honorable mention category, and return the favor by creating a post on your site linking to the Watcher’s Council contest for the week.

It's a great way of exposing your best work to Watcher’s Council readers and Council members. while grabbing the increased traffic and notoriety. And how good is that, eh?

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

A big story over the Memorial Day weekend concerned one Chris Hayes, a commentator over at MSNBC who celebrated Memorial Day by announcing how uncomfortable he was with referring to our fallen warriors as heroes.

CHRIS HAYES: Thinking today and observing Memorial Day, that'll be happening tomorrow. Just talked with Lt. Col. Steve Burke, who was a casualty officer with the Marines and had to tell people [inaudible]. Um, I, I, ah, [Steve] Beck, sorry, um, I think it's interesting because I think it is very difficult to talk about the war dead and the fallen without invoking valor, without invoking the words "heroes." Um, and, ah, ah, why do I feel so comfortable [sic] about the word "hero"? I feel comfortable, ah, uncomfortable, about the word because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war. Um, and, I don't want to obviously desecrate or disrespect memory of anyone that's fallen, and obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism: hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers and things like that. But it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic. But maybe I'm wrong about that.

This sounds like the sort of double talking faux intellectual rap nerdy poli sci majors use to try and get credulous freshman girls out of their panties at an Obama after party once a few joints have made the rounds.

Nevertheless, I have to give Mr. Hayes credit.

The fact is, most self-styled progressives hate and despise the military.Oh, they'll pay lip service to 'supporting the troops' because, you know, it sounds patriotic and provides them a figleaf, but the attitude is fairly obvious. To people like Chris Hayes, the people that go into the military are suckers and dupes, and more than one of his comrades on the left have shown that this is exactly how they see it...especially when they think no one's listening too closely.

Hayes, one of the editors of the left-wing fringe magazine The Nation was simply being honest, and I commend him for that.

Far less commendable were his efforts to walk things back once he came under fire from the Veterans of Foreign Wars and blogs on the rightside of the fence. But then, the species is not noted for its courage.

Even more interesting were the attempts to defend Chris Hayes remarks from the left, most of them again using the usual sophistry to question whether the term 'heroes' is appropriate.

Let's examine something.

At the present time, we have a volunteer military. What that means is that some young men in our society made a choice to restrict their own freedom and risk their lives to defend the rest of us..including the Chris Hayes's of the country. Whether they actually see combat or not, there's a degree of selflessness and honor in doing so that can only be characterized as heroic. And there's always the chance, even in peace time or behind the lines that things can go horribly wrong.

The left, for instance, has always had a good chuckle over President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service. What never seemed to get mentioned is that two airmen in his unit died in training accidents during his service. The risks are always inherent.

People like Chris Hayes don't understand this because increasingly, there's a social and even a regional divide on those whom serve and those whom don't. Because of that, many people who think like Chris Hayes not only have never served in the military themselves, they frequently don't know anyone who has. To them, it seems like anyone who would volunteer for the military is someone beneath them socially and intellectually, who had no other option. Especially for patriotic motives, which they also think of as borderline neanderthal. I mean, why would someone risk his life at minimal pay for such a deeply flawed country like America if they were, you know, smart?

That brings up an interesting point. I wonder if Mr. Hayes and his friends on the left have ever considered what it might be like if the military, law enforcement, the whole security apparatus started thinking like they do and looking out for number one?

We actually have an example of what that's like, and it's fairly close at hand.

Just south of our borders, there's a war going on between various drug cartels over control of the drug traffic and Mexico's organized crime industry. The two main players are the old line Sinaloa Cartel and a new, upstart cartel known as the Zetas. Guess where the Zetas came from?

They were originally part of an elite U.S.-trained military force designed to combat and defeat the drug cartels. And at some point, they took a good look at what and whom they were defending for $100 per month, got smart and went into the cartel business for themselves. A large chunk of Mexico's army and police have made the same sort of decision, either by actively getting involved with one of the cartels or passively by taking a payoff to look the other way.

Towards the end of the Western Empire, Rome's legions did exactly the same thing, selling themselves to the highest bidder and even sacking a city here and there. So did the notorious 'Free Companies' in the 14th century during the slack periods of ceasefire during the Hundred Year's War.

That's what happens when patriotism, loyalty and honor are no longer a motive and people with arms who know how to use them 'get smart', look out for number one and start pillaging the elites that used to despise them. And that's something Chris Hayes and his comrades on the left ought to spend some time thinking about the next time they're tempted to open their mouths in this fashion.

Speaking of which, having dealt with the honest man, let's deal with someone of an entire different sort.

We’re calling on all Americans to join us in honoring and supporting our extraordinary Vietnam veterans who are among the more than three million Americans who served in that war. There are so many ways to show our appreciation to these veterans and their families, and many of them are available at www.vietnamwar50th.com.

As this anniversary proceeds we will also continue working to ensure that our Vietnam Veterans– and all veterans – receive the services, respect, and support they have earned. Our efforts on behalf of Vietnam veterans are part of our larger effort to make sure our nation is serving all our veterans as well as they served us. And because no veteran who fights for our nation overseas should have to fight for a job when they come home, this country has made it a priority for businesses to hire veterans and provided resources that make it easier for veterans to find a job.

Supporting and honoring our veterans and their families can’t be the work of government and our businesses alone. That’s why the First Lady and the Vice President’s wife, Dr. Jill Biden, are leading a national effort, Joining Forces, to mobilize Americans in supporting today’s military families and veterans. Only about one percent of Americans may wear the uniform, but 100 percent of Americans need to be supporting those who do.

Let's take a look at how President Obama has 'supported those who serve', to use his phrase.

Our commander-in-chief showed his support for our military and their families at the beginning of his term by attempting to charge our wounded warriors for the medical care they were receiving for free via the VA, making them take out their own private insurance...this while the president, congress, various apparatchniks and their families get the best medical care available at no charge. He only backed off after the national commanders of veteran's groups like the American Legion and the VFW threatened to make the mother of all stinks over the matter.

Small wonder that after this kind of 'support' from President Obama, very few veterans are going to vote for him, and we can almost certainly expect another effort by the Department of Justice to disenfranchise as much of our active duty military vote as possible in the coming November election.

You see, when it comes down to it, President Obama has exactly the same attitude towards our military that Chris Hayes does. The difference is that Chris Hayes, just for a minute, decided to be honest about it.

Without question, I prefer the honest man, no matter how flawed and misguided his reasoning.Such men can be worked with, at least on some level. The liar is only fit to be cast bodily out of the Temple.

The votes for the first round of the the Egyptian presidential election have been counted, and the results are predictable..one candidate from the Muslim Brotherhood representing the Islamists, an done candidate representing the military junta and the status quo. Given that the official turnout was only a mere 46%, I have a feeling this is no accident but the result of the military and the Brotherhood being the two factions with the most boots on the ground and thus being able to control the 'results'.

The junta's choice is Former air force commander Ahmed Shafiq, who ended up with 23.3 percent of the vote.He appeals to Egyptians who are starting to become leery of the idea of Islamist rule and what it might entail.He will also get support from the Copts ( about 10% of the electorate) and Egypt's business community, what remains of it.

His opponent, pictured above is the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Musri, pictured above, who got 24.3 percent of the vote.

Most of the rest of the vote went to leftist Hamdeen Sabahy, with 20.4 percent, Islamist Abdel Moneim Abol Fotouh, with 17.2 percent, and former Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, with 10.9 percent.

The secular leftists will be in the uncomfortable position of either voting for a man who has espoused admiration for deposed dictator Hosni Mubarak or voting for the Muslim Brotherhood. Those votes will likely be split as the more religious and more Marxist will vote for the Islamists, given that there's not much difference between the Brotherhood's economic policies and theirs. The more secularist 'liberals' will likely either hold their noses and vote for Shafiq or sit the election out.

Foutouh's supporters will almost certainly vote for Musri, and an endorsement by Foutouh is likely in exchange for a piece of the pie. Moussa's supporters are a mixed bag, and it's hard to tell which way they'd go.

Musri is not pulling any punches about what Egypt under his rule will be like. Just last week, at a Cairo University campaign rally, he said:

“The Quran in our Constitution, the Prophet is our leader, jihad is our path, and martyrdom in the service of God is our goal. We shall enforce Islamic Sharia, and shall accept no alternative to it.”

If there's a reasonably honest election, I'd predict a win for Musri. If Shafiq wins, you can expect a great deal more unrest and turmoil.In fact, Shafiq's campaign headquarters in the residential quarter of Dokki were trashed and burnt to the ground by protesters as soon as the results came in.

The runoff, scheduled for June 16-17 will name the new president the military junta has promised to hand power to on July 1.

Friday, May 25, 2012

Standard & Poor’s just slashed the credit ratings of Spain's top five banks after previously downgrading ratings on 11 Spanish banks back in late April. Moody's followed suit soon after.

Bankia, one of Spain's largest banks that was partially nationalized recently after a 4.5 billion euro bail out has asked the Spanish government for a further 19 billion euro ( $24 billion). One in ten bank accounts in Spain are in Bankia. It's an open question whether Spain can afford to bail out Bankia...or whether it can risk the social unrest that would come form letting it tank.

Bankia's rating was cut to BB+, one notch into junk status, from BBB-, while another bank BFA, which was already in junk status, was cut to B+, four notches into junk territory, from BB-.

Aside from an out of hand welfare state glommed onto by thousands of immigrants from North Africa and the Arab world, Spain has a serious problem with more prosperous regions like Catalonia being called on to fund poorer areas .

And Catalonia has just told Madrid that it is running out of cash.

Spain's big ace in the hole was that it had done a reasonable job selling its debt thus far, about half of what the country will need for 2012. But now Catalonia, by far Spain's most properous region has informed Madrid that it needs help from the central government because it's running out of options for refinancing any more debt for this year.

The talks about talks between Iran and the so-called P5+1 (the five permanent Security Council members plus Germany)came to an end yesterday without any concrete results.

Meanwhile, the Iranians made use of the months of time granted them to double their stockpile of uranium that is close to weapons grade at 20%, and to vastly increase the amount of working centrifuges at it's hidden Fordrow plant, where IAEA inspectors reported they had found particles of 27% enriched uranium. well above weapons grade.

The Iranians are apparently unwilling to give up 20% plus enrichment or provide what the western nations consider adequate monitoring of their nuclear program in exchange for what's been put on the table thus far, which includes medical isotopes, some nuclear safety cooperation and spare parts for civilian airliners that are badly needed in Iran.

Saeed Jalili, Iran’s lead nuclear negotiator, claimed the Western plan's were 'unbalanced' and accused the West of “language and phrases very similar to those employed by Israeli government leaders”.

This takes real nerve on Jalili's part, considering that the entire Iranian nuclear program was clandestine and illegal according to the non-Proliferation Treaty Iran signed until it was outed by Iranian dissidents in 2004.

The talks are expected to resume on June 18-19 in Moscow according to European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

“It is clear that we both want to make progress, and that there is some common ground,” Ashton, who is formally leading the talks, told reporters at the end of the talks. “However, significant differences remain. Nonetheless, we do agree on the need for further discussion to expand that common ground.”

So far, there doesn't seem to be much common ground - but a great deal of Iranian success in playing for time while the centrifuges run and they work at getting their nuclear facilities out of harm's way.

The Iranians have run this game successfully several times before, and it remains to be seen if they'll manage to pull it off again.And especially, whether the Israelis are going to decide to do some 'talking' of their own.

One thing's certain. Iran is not going to give up its nuclear weapons program because of any agreements or incentives from the West. if that were on th etable, it would have happened already.

<Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the gal from J-Street and President Obama's hire to run the Democratic National Committee just committed another large blunder.

Wasserman-Schultz had been booked into Miami's Temple Israel to try and sell the Jewish congregation there on how good President Obama is for Israel. Also scheduled to speak was Stanley Tate, one of its past presidents and most respected memberswho actually helped found Temple Israel's congregation.

Since Tate is a former founder of the Republican Jewish Coaltion ( RJC) and a Romney supporter, it was pretty predictable that his speech would contain a few facts that would make Wassermann-Schultz's pro-Obama spin look silly. So she had Tate banned from speaking:

I have been told by the Temple Israel Board of Trustees, that in no uncertain terms, I am not welcome, nor am I desired to speak on the bema (dais), nor does the Temple want me in any way to address the attendees on the evening of May 25th, after the Shabbat Services, even though the other invited speaker will be giving her politically motivated remarks on the topic of “Maintaining a Strong U.S. – Israel Relationship.” – Stanley Tate

Tate also stated that the Board of Trustees held a “special” meeting on May 14th where the majority of the board decided not to let him address the congregation.During a phone interview with Mr. Tate, the former founder of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) said that Wasserman Schultz told board members, “Stanley cannot be allowed to speak”, and that “no other speaker can speak in opposition before or after her.”

Tate and his resigned from the congregation in protest.And he went public to the members of the Congregation about it.

Jewish Synagogues do not pass a collection plate at every service or have an offertory. Instead they charge annual dues for memberships, take donations from congregants and sell tickets to Rosh Hashonah and Yom Kippur services ( known as High Holidays, when even most unaffiliated Jews attend services) to non-members.

Losing a significant number of paying members and the resulting bad publicity apparently had an effect on Temple Israel's bottom line. And that's why Wasserman-Achultz got th eboot, not 'security'.

Congratulations Mr. Tate and congratulations to the congregants of Temple Israel..kol hakavod.

more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/24/2816241/temple-cancels-wasserman-schultz.html#storylink=cpy

Aside from threats to Robert Stacy McCain's family, Kimberlin and his associates also specialize in SWATing, which involves making a 911 call to local law enforcement and sending a SWAT team to your target's home. Pat Patterico, who was a victim of Kimberlin's has a story you should read.

The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast, and the results are in for this week's Watcher's Council match up.

What is peace between nations? What does it consist of and how does it happen? This week's winner, Joshuapundit's What Does Peace Mean Anyway? decided to examine that very timely question, with a glance at how it applies to the Middle East. Here's a slice:

Peace is said to be a high priority, no matter whom you talk to.People crave it and pray for it, and rightly so.

This is a much more important issue, I think, than most of us realize, especially in these days when people use terms like 'The Long War' and 'the peace process' .Yet few of us, especially in the West actually stop to think of what we really mean by peace, and what you can't define clearly is frequently illusory.

The Bible provides one definition, with the prophet Isaiah talking of a time of peace so profound that men will not only transform the arms of battle into implements of peace but cease to study the arts and strategy of war.

That's obviously an unrealized ideal in the immediate future.

Islam is much more direct about the matter. Westerners are confused when Muslims say that Islam means peace (actually, it comes from the Arabic aslama, which means submission). To Muslims, who divide the world into dar Islam, the part of the world where Islam rules and the non-Muslim world, referred to as dar harb ( literally the house of war), peace is much simpler. It's a condition where the entire world is dar Islam, exactly what Mohammed ordered his followers to strive for right before his death in 632 CE, according to the Hadiths.

If some Muslims talk of peace when they actually mean a time of dar Islam, it's understandable that something gets lost in translation - sometimes deliberately so.

So, is peace then simply an absence of war and conflict? It ain't necessarily so.

In his piece, Robert Stacy McCain writes an account about he and his family being harassed by a convicted domestic terrorist named Brett Kimberlin who just happens to have a wealthy and well connected family after McCain wrote an article about his depredations. We here at the Council chose to make this week's contest part of a blogburst going on around the 'sphere at a great many sites. A number of the Council members have written individual stories about what's going on or are linking to other stories about what's going on - to show Stacy he's by no means alone and we stand with him. You should do the same.

Yeah, we got your six, Mr M. Stand your ground, in every sense of the word.

Here are this week’s full results. New Zeal and The Mellow Jihadi were unable to vote this week; neither was affected by the 2/3 vote penalty:

Thursday, May 24, 2012

The latest attempt by the Obama campaign to use its media lackeys to create 'spontaneous' talking points surfaced yesterday and escalated today with an obviously pre-arranged barrage.

It started off with a piece in Market Watch by someone named Rex Nutting entitled, 'The Obama spending binge never happened.'

Essentially, the piece is a variation on the old hit tune 'Bush Did It.' Nutting attempts to bedazzle the math challenged by producing charts of federal spending under various presidents that purport to show that President Barack Obama is actually a fiscal conservative, presiding over the lowest federal outlays in modern history, Hey, who knew? And the very next day, like clockwork, these 'facts' were trumpeted in op-eds in the WAPO, The New York Times, The Soros media outlets and various outlets in the Lefty blogosphere. Another right wing myth exploded!

“I don’t know how they've been bamboozling folks into thinking that they are the responsible, fiscally-disciplined party. They run up these wild debts and then when we take over we have to clean it up,” Obama said. “And then they point and say, 'Look how irresponsible they are.' Look at facts, look at the numbers. And now I want to finish the job," President Obama said at a fundraiser in Denver.

Simple addition shows us that President Barack Hussein Obama has run up more debt than every one of his predecessors combined. So how did Nutting attempt to spin this and defy basic math?

Simple.

First he credits President Bush with massive spending during his second term, and adds well over a trillion dollars for 2009...conveniently leaving out that the 'wild debts' President Obama was pontificating about started cascading after January of 2006...when the Democrats took over both houses of Congress with a veto proof majority and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid started running things.

Second, he also leaves out the cute little fact that the then Senator Obama was a member of Congress who was sworn in after the 2004 elections and remained in the Senate throughout George W. Bush's second term. Barack Obama thus voted for every bit of those 'wild debts' he's laboring to convince people he had nothing to do with..including TARP.

President Obama's 'stimulus' (essentially a looting of the federal treasury for his political allies), the gifting of GM to the unions at the taxpayer's expense and the subsequent tax break at the taxpayer's expense, the half trillion stolen from Medicare to pay for ObamaCare, the billions gifted to Obama donors and bundlers touting various green energy scams like Solyndra, $2 billion for the President and Michelle's little road trip to India, a billion or more for the Libya War, none of these appear on Nutting's chart as spending. Neither do the effects of the president's policy of quantitative easing, which involved 'digitizing' dollars to 'buy' debt and significantly lowered the value of U.S. currency.

Nutting also comes out with this gem: " [Obama's] budget proposals called for even more spending in subsequent years. But the Congress (mostly Republicans but many Democrats, too) stopped him. If Obama had been a king who could impose his will, perhaps what the Republicans are saying about an Obama spending binge would be accurate."

You have to wonder who writes this man's comedy material.

The budget and spending that were mandated were entirely the work of the Democrats who controlled both houses of Congress. And far from 'stopping him' the Democrats forced ObamaCare, the 'stimulus', the auto bail outs and many other wasteful programs through without Republican input, because they had enough votes. Does Nutting not want us to remember how the Republicans were literally locked out of the room while these programs and legislation were crafted? The GOP wasn't able to get control of the House of Representatives until January of 2011, and even then they've been thwarted by this president use of executive orders and signing statements to recklessly continue running up the nation's credit card - to the point where our national credit rating was lowered for the first time in history.

And the constant references to 'the Obama budget' are giggle worthy all by themselves. There's been no Obama budget for three years...just requests to raise the debt ceiling to keep the fiction going.

I really hope the president and his allies like Nutting keep singing this particular song...first, because 'Bushie Done It' isn't quite the hit it once was, and because the obvious bolshoi is so easily refuted.

President Bush spent far more federal money than I liked, but he also had trillion dollar hits in the form of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina to deal with. As my friend over at Political Math reminds us, comparing Bush's spending with Obama's is like comparing someone driving 63 MPH with someone roaring along at 170 MPH...and never mind that during Bush's second term, the Democrats called the tune! In fact, if anything, President Obama's recklessness and speed has increased markedly since the video was made.

The Obama campaign has an October surprise planned for us. And among other things, it involved providing unprecedented access to classified material and giving access to a major special ops planner and commander to people without even a glimmer of a security clearance.

Documents acquired by Judicial Watch from the U.S. Department of Defense and the CIA show that they were instructed by the White House to meet with Kathryn Bigelow, Academy Award-winning director of The Hurt Locker, and screenwriter Mark Boal (both Obama donors) provide them with access to classified material as well as the identity and access to a special ops planner and Commander of SEAL Team Six for the purpose of assisting Bigelow and Boal in finishing their upcoming Hollywood movie on the assassination of Osama bin-Laden.

Just by coincidence, that film, which will undoubtedly feature the president's 'gutsy' decision and portray him as a courageous leader is scheduled to hit the screen on..wait for it..October 16th, 2012. A couple of weeks before America goes to the polls:“These documents, which took nine months and a federal lawsuit to disgorge from the Obama administration, show that politically-connected film makers were giving extraordinary and secret access to bin Laden raid information, including the identity of a Seal Team Six leader,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “It is both ironic and hypocritical that the Obama administration stonewalled Judicial Watch’s pursuit of the bin Laden death photos, citing national security concerns, yet seemed willing to share intimate details regarding the raid to help Hollywood filmmakers release a movie ‘perfectly timed to give a home-stretch boost’ to the Obama campaign.”

It's bad enough that this is essentially a Hollywood produced campaign ad, and amounts to a multi-million dollar contribution in kind, forbidden by FEC rules.

Even worse, neither Bigelow or Boal have any kind of security clearance, nor does anyone involved in the making of this film who might have access to the classified information that was revealed as well as the identity and location of the SEAL commander. They could fall into the hands of the wrong people with distressing ease.

This president has said repeatedly that America is 'at war with al-Qaeda'. If you grant him that premise, can this be seen as treason, legally defined as aid and comfort to the enemy in war time? It could most assuredly be treason if it involved an enemy we'd had Congress declare war on as the Constitution mandates.

That aside, it's obvious we are dealing with people who care very little about the country or its security and everything about retaining power.

They will say or do anything to retain it.

Again, this is another story that ought to be a screaming headline for every news source in the country. Instead, it's been buried.